Democracy is a two-winged bird, for it needs both wings to fly

Just as a bird cannot fly without both wings in prime condition so too can a democracy not flourish without the two fundamental types of democracy. On the right wing is formal- or political democracy, the democratic right to elect representative officials into office in service of the state. On the left wing is economic democracy- or democracy in the work place. In our system the left wing is broken beyond repair and the right wing is injured, it is not democratic in the sense that it serves the masses but rather the ruling class, the 1%. Just as our formal democracy is flawed, so too was the economic democracy of the Soviet Union, for the economy was state owned and the interests of the state were in contradiction to the democratic rights of the workers. Just as our economic democracy wing was broken- so too was the political democracy wing of the Soviet Union. So how can a society truly become democratic? The formal democracy always serves the interests of the ruling class, so the ruling class cannot be the capitalist class- the 1% but rather the class of the working masses- of the 99%. The economic democracy must not be in contradiction with the state. For this to work the economy must be truly socialist in nature (worker, not state owned and democratically controlled), unlike the largely state-capitalist economic systems of the Soviet Union and China. In America today, unlike the Soviet Union and China, we are already an advanced capitalist society and thus state-ownership of the economy is not a necessary prerequisite to a socialist system in our country. Thus we have the potential to fix both wings so the bird can fly. For the first time in history we cannot have merely formal or economic democracy, but both forms which are indispensable to the democratic system. The only way we can have real democracy is by the establishment of a state which serves the interests of the working masses and not the 1%, and by establishing a worker owned- democratic, and truly socialist economy for the first time in human history. This is the only way for both wings of democracy to function, to have a truly democratic society.